ARABIAN HOSPITALS

ARABIAN HOSPITALS

To early Christians belong the credit of having established the

first charitable institutions for caring for the sick; but their

efforts were soon eclipsed by both Eastern and Western

Mohammedans. As early as the eighth century the Arabs had begun

building hospitals, but the flourishing time of hospital building

seems to have begun early in the tenth century. Lady Seidel, in

918 A.D., opened a hospital at Bagdad, endowed with an amount

corresponding to about three hundred pounds sterling a month.

Other similar hospitals were erected in t 15415q1622p he years immediately

following, and in 977 the Emir Adad-adaula established an

enormous institution with a staff of twenty-four medical

officers. The great physician Rhazes is said to have selected the

site for one of these hospitals by hanging pieces of meat in

various places about the city, selecting the site near the place

at which putrefaction was slowest in making its appearance. By

the middle of the twelfth century there were something like sixty

medical institutions in Bagdad alone, and these institutions were

free to all patients and supported by official charity.

The Emir Nureddin, about the year 1160, founded a great hospital

at Damascus, as a thank-offering for his victories over the

Crusaders. This great institution completely overshadowed all the

earlier Moslem hospitals in size and in the completeness of its

equipment. It was furnished with facilities for teaching, and was

conducted for several centuries in a lavish manner, regardless of

expense. But little over a century after its foundation the fame

of its methods of treatment led to the establishment of a larger

and still more luxurious institution--the Mansuri hospital at

Cairo. It seems that a certain sultan, having been cured by

medicines from the Damascene hospital, determined to build one of

his own at Cairo which should eclipse even the great Damascene

institution.

In a single year (1283-1284) this hospital was begun and

completed. No efforts were spared in hurrying on the good work,

and no one was exempt from performing labor on the building if he

chanced to pass one of the adjoining streets. It was the order of

the sultan that any person passing near could be impressed into

the work, and this order was carried out to the letter, noblemen

and beggars alike being forced to lend a hand. Very naturally,

the adjacent thoroughfares became unpopular and practically

deserted, but still the holy work progressed rapidly and was

shortly completed.

This immense structure is said to have contained four courts,

each having a fountain in the centre; lecture-halls, wards for

isolating certain diseases, and a department that corresponded to

the modern hospital's "out-patient" department. The yearly

endowment amounted to something like the equivalent of one

hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. A novel feature was a

hall where musicians played day and night, and another where

story-tellers were employed, so that persons troubled with

insomnia were amused and melancholiacs cheered. Those of a

religious turn of mind could listen to readings of the Koran,

conducted continuously by a staff of some fifty chaplains. Each

patient on leaving the hospital received some gold pieces, that

he need not be obliged to attempt hard labor at once.

In considering the astonishing tales of these sumptuous Arabian

institutions, it should be borne in mind that our accounts of

them are, for the most part, from Mohammedan sources.

Nevertheless, there can be little question that they were

enormous institutions, far surpassing any similar institutions in

western Europe. The so-called hospitals in the West were, at this

time, branches of monasteries under supervision of the monks, and

did not compare favorably with the Arabian hospitals.

But while the medical science of the Mohammedans greatly

overshadowed that of the Christians during this period, it did

not completely obliterate it. About the year 1000 A.D. came into

prominence the Christian medical school at Salerno, situated on

the Italian coast, some thirty miles southeast of Naples. Just

how long this school had been in existence, or by whom it was

founded, cannot be determined, but its period of greatest

influence was the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.

The members of this school gradually adopted Arabic medicine,

making use of many drugs from the Arabic pharmacopoeia, and this

formed one of the stepping-stones to the introduction of Arabian

medicine all through western Europe.

It was not the adoption of Arabian medicines, however, that has

made the school at Salerno famous both in rhyme and prose, but

rather the fact that women there practised the healing art.

Greatest among them was Trotula, who lived in the eleventh

century, and whose learning is reputed to have equalled that of

the greatest physicians of the day. She is accredited with a work

on Diseases of Women, still extant, and many of her writings on

general medical subjects were quoted through two succeeding

centuries. If we may judge from these writings, she seemed to

have had many excellent ideas as to the proper methods of

treating diseases, but it is difficult to determine just which of

the writings credited to her are in reality hers. Indeed, the

uncertainty is even greater than this implies, for, according to

some writers, "Trotula" is merely the title of a book. Such an

authority as Malgaigne, however, believed that such a woman

existed, and that the works accredited to her are authentic. The

truth of the matter may perhaps never be fully established, but

this at least is certain--the tradition in regard to Trotula

could never have arisen had not women held a far different

position among the Arabians of this period from that accorded

them in contemporary Christendom.